The finals of Imagine Cup in Poland will take place on the 12th of April. Specialists from SoftwareHut will once more co-organize this prestigious Microsoft contest. Imagine Cup is a project that has been taking place for 15 years, and its main goal is to promote and support entrepreneurship for young people.
This year, participants will compete In four categories: artificial intelligence, big data, mixed reality and smart city. In the last category, startups operating on the market may also participate besides students.
SoftwareHut wants to support the youth.
SoftwareHut is once again supporting this event as a sponsor, mentor of certain teams, as well as a participant in the jury at the early phase of the contest. For years, Microsoft’s initiative has been attracting young, ambitious and creative people, who often surpass the current state of the art technology. For SoftwareHut, this innovativeness is essential. The SoftwareHut specialists who participate in the Imagine Cup as members of the jury or mentors, were contestants in the competition themselves. That is why they understand the needs and doubts of the contestants. Mentoring is more important to us, because many of our current specialists, who previously competed in the contest, today recall it as an amazing experience which provided great knowledge and an energy boost in fulfilling their dreams – explains Robert Strzelecki, CEO of SoftwareHut.
Prizes aren’t everything.
Besides the obvious benefit of participating in the contest, which is project co-financing and promotion, participants may gain a lot more. It is also very valuable for young specialists to have the opportunity to confront their ideas with the knowledge of experts, who are willing to share their know-how and experience in every available way. It is worth stressing the value of networking that takes place backstage. Such business contacts may be very precious in the future – says Marcin Bartoszyk, CTO at SoftwareHut and four-time finalist of the national Imagine Cup competition, later a mentor and jury member. The Imagine Cup contest is a great place to increase your technical knowledge as well as marketing skills. It can be an introduction to the business world which shows how to transform an interesting idea into a market-ready product. If you look at the history of the Imagine Cup, there have been many teams that started with a simple idea and currently own businesses and sell their product. If you have a business concept and you don’t want to establish a startup at this moment, you should participate in the ImagineCup, which is an introduction to the world of startups – adds Bartoszuk.
Zonifero available for contestants
During the Imagine Cup, SoftwareHut will also be a technological partner, providing contestants with the Zonifero app, which will simplify communication between organizers, contestants and guests. Thanks to the courtesy of the partner from Bialystok, all the contestants will be able to move around the contest location during the finals, which will be held at the Institute for Industrial Design. Thanks to the Zonifero mobile app, participants will be able to see the map of the entire location on their smartphones. They will also receive notifications from the contest organizers; every contestant will have a calendar to view their meeting schedule. We thought that it would be a good idea to take away contestants' unnecessary stress related to looking for the right room or mentor, since the contest itself is stressful enough. – quips Łukasz Muszyński, Product Manager from SoftwareHut, who is responsible for developing Zonifero.
The main goal of the Imagine Cup is to promote business activity among young people. Such initiatives are a great opportunity to get recognition in the industry and to exchange experience. This is very important, especially in the IT sector, due to the rapid pace of the industry's development – adds Robert Strzelecki.
